A Merry Overseas Christmas

This is the first time I've ever been away from home for Christmas. It definitely snuck up on me. All of a sudden it was just about Christmas without even a hint of its approach. No battles for the last space in a crowded shopping mall's parking lot, no discussions with friends about what they were getting their parents in hopes of finding some brilliant new idea to give a break from the traditional sweaters and ties, no pond hockey, no decorations on lawns and in windows, no lights, no 24/7 Christmas movies on tv, no carols...nothing! I received a jolt at school the other day when the head teacher was writing a letter and asked me what the date was. "Poush 8th", I replied. "No, I mean the English date", he said. "Oh...umm, Dec.23". Wait, what?!? How was it possible that Christmas was only 2 days away? Well, it was possible, and it's sad thinking about my family at home all celebrating together and me being so far away. But, I decided to bring some Christmas to Nepal and found there's nothing like the excitement of a 7 year old to cheer a person right up. I spent almost all day yesterday with my nephew getting ready. We awoke to the news that one of the political parties had called a strike and there would be no school. This was met by extreme joy by Pratik and a brief moment of fear by myself when I thought my plans for xmas might not be possible (because, of course, I had left it until Dec.24 to go out and buy the things I needed). But, luckily the strike didn't apply to shops. Just schools and buses mostly. So, we managed to fashion some stockings with some red material and a stapler and we made a tree and fireplace out of coloured paper. I'm quite proud of our work, in fact (see photo on right). Pratik had lots of fun stapling and decorating, and he was bouncing around all day asking all kinds of questions. I don't know if I've ever seen him as happy as he was this morning to find full stockings and gifts. He's even convinced that he can see reindeer footprints on the roof now that were definitely not there yesterday.

At school, there is lots to be excited about. I've been given the key to one room and with it the permission to do whatever I want with the interior. In addition to building it as a music room, I've been working to also include a small library there. I've hauled all the old books out that had been sitting in a locked wardrobe, just collecting dust and providing snacks for a pair of mice. Now, I'm in the process of organizing and cataloguing what we've got. Some time has opened up during the school day for me because about a dozen student teachers have arrived from the university to do their teaching practice for one month and can cover off classes. I'm just teaching class 3 English and class 5 math each day with the rest of the time to work on other projects, which are all keeping me rather busy. The head teacher decided to have all these student teachers report to me in my new "office" and soon-to-be library / music hall. Thus, tacked onto his already lengthy introduction for me of "volunteer from Canada, educational consultant and personal advisor" is now "chief librarian and student teacher team lead". They've each promised to bring in some additional book donations by Sunday and have been helpful at sorting through some of the books written in Nepali.

Things have been moving fast, downright lightning speed by Nepali standards, so I've been doing most of the book-writing at home as well as preparing other documents like the library project plan, some Child Friendly Education teaching guidelines, and some English speaking practice points for classes 3-7 (mostly in the mornings before school). I'm very excited about the library because reading in leisure time is really not much a part of the culture here. I'd like to be able to give the students easy access to books that they can enjoy reading and have them happily accelerate their learning on their own time without even knowing it. I'm hoping to make the room comfortable, welcoming, bright and colourful so that they'll enjoy being there as an inspiring change from the drab brick and cement world of their classrooms. They're showing a tremendous amount of curiosity about the room already as I'm working away and trying to get their hands on some of the storybooks they've seen me sifting through. All good signs I reckon.

So, life is moving along quickly here without me hardly noticing. Barely anything strikes me as out of the ordinary these days and I find that I, myself, have developed quite the head wobble, usually meaning "ok", "yes" or "I'm leaving now", as well as other very much Nepali gestures. I call people towards me with my fingers pointed downwards and twist my hands like I'm screwing in a lightbulb if I'm confused about something. It's also started feeling very natural to give and receive things only with my right hand while touching my elbow with my left hand, and to touch a person and then my forehead a few times if I accidentally bump them with my foot (both of which seemed like very awkward things to do for quite some time). Hopefully, I can refrain from doing any of these sorts of things when I eventually return back home again, but try not to look at me too oddly if it takes a bit of time to break the habits.

Happy Holidays and Much Love to All from Nepal!

Give a Man a Fish...

I know I'm at risk of sounding redundant, but there's another festival going on now. This one is called Jaatra and lasts 3 days. It's mostly just the Newari caste that celebrates it, but the majority of people in Kirtipur are Newari so it feels like a big deal around here. Maa and Baa have been brewing ayla for weeks in preparation and the late night troupes of drummers and cymbal-clangers have been growing steadily in intensity the past few days. Judging by the amount of food that's been brought into the house for preparation, there'll probably be over 100 people coming over today for the party, so a "small" gathering of just the immediate family this time. There are some especially weird food items being made for this festival, ones that I haven't yet seen. For example, this morning with my vegetables and rice I was also given a small dish of some clear jelly material. I tried to ask what it was exactly, but all I got for an answer was that it came from meat somehow. It concerned me a little bit what part of the meat could create such an un-meat-like substance and must say that it did not at all taste good. So, 4.5 months in and I have finally found a type of Nepali food that I don't like.

As winter weather settles in, and with rainy season well behind us, 2 of Kathmandu's 3 most complained about problems have been getting worse. There've been more and more electricity cuts and pollution in the city is getting out of control. At any given time, it's starting to feel more likely that there won't be electricity than that there will. It's a little bit inconvenient, but my host sister has found ways to use it's unreliability to her advantage. For example, when Pratik is watching too much TV and won't do his homework, all she needs to do is shut off the main switch feeding power into the 2nd floor rooms (or rather, she'll usually ask me to do this because she can't quite reach it without a stool) and when the TV shuts down just sigh and say "ahh batti gayo" (light has gone). Pratik will then become bored enough to turn to his homework and the electricity tends to miraculously return at about the same moment he finishes. As for the pollution, luckily this is a problem concentrated within the ring road itself and doesn't extend to where I live up in the hills. I'm very grateful to be far enough removed to be able to avoid the Kathmandu black lung because being on the streets there makes me feel it's more effectively taking years off my life than cigarettes could. Actually, I'm thinking I'll start smoking anytime I go there now so that I can at least benefit from the filter. Fortunately, I don't find much need to go there much.

At school, the aftermath of the exams for me has meant an increased sense of responsibility for making sure the students learn what they need to know to do well on their exams, and also a slight shift in overall focus. Before, I had been trusting in the regular teachers to be working through plans that would cover off all the necessary topics and viewed myself as someone who could fill in wherever needed to avoid idle periods or give more conversational practice. But after seeing the students facing exam questions that they clearly had never seen anything similar to before, I now think more test-specific preparation is needed. So I'll be working a lot more directly on giving them practice with the types of questions they'll have to face on their finals 4 months from now. As much as I hated pop quizzes when I was a student I think I may have to start employing them to keep the students reminded of what they have already learned. They seem to quickly forget what they've been through in previous lessons and not see how it's all connected. The good news is that I'll be with class 3 regularly now so can give some structure to at least that one class. I went through all the questions on their last exam with them and then gave them the same test again a few days later. They all did much better the 2nd time around.

What I've been discovering lately is that as much as I'd love to be able to teach all these students to speak fluent English by the time I leave here, that's far from possible. There's not enough time for that. Learning is a process. Hence the slight shift in focus. Now, I'm looking more to what can be done to improve the process by which the students are learning instead of just trying to cram as much learning as possible into them during my short 10 months here. One project I've started working on with the Head Teacher is an English Conversation Book to be made available for the teachers so that they can build their English skills and run full classes in English. The idea came from English conversation classes with our own school's teachers during half-time where they can practice asking and answering questions with me. The Head Teacher had the idea that there could be demand from teachers in other schools as well. All our teachers very much want to improve their English, but feel a bit in the dark about how they can do that. So we want to make a book available that is directly related to the context where they'll be using English. It will have different chapters with example conversations for specific situations around the school and then also highlight common vocabulary words, grammar points and sentence structures. It sort of feels like instead of giving the students some fish, we might be able to teach lots of teachers how to better teach all their students to fish. It has some potential to indirectly reach a whole lot more students if well can pull it off. Though that in itself may be somewhat of a long shot as I'm in no way qualified to write such a book. But, I'm the only one here so it's worth a shot, and both the Head Teacher and the publisher he's talked to are very eager for it to be finished.

Exam Week

It's becoming distinctly colder here on the edge of the valley. It's still hovering above freezing, but it feels much colder than that in the mornings and evenings when there's no source of heat and nothing that could be considered even close to insulation. There's only my thin bedroom door between me and the elements at night as the air from outside is free-flowing all through the stairwell and in the kitchen there's no barrier at all. Only a breezy iron gate leading to the roof. And the windows are always open up there. As my dad commented when he was here, people seem to take very little effort to keep windows and doors closed because even though there is a small amount of heat generated within the rooms with people inside, it's nothing at all like conserving the great warming heat of a furnace at home. Everyone's been getting sick it seems. Something like chicken pox has taken turns passing through my neice, nephew, sister and now Pratik. I'm not sure why exactly, but they've all come to live in our house while fighting it off, so it's not surprising that my sister and Pratik caught it. The good part is that I've been allowed to help out in the kitchen a whole lot more and graduated from just a mere vegetable chopper to a fully functional daal bhat chef. Even had a go and making the achar, but it turned out more like a tomatoey water paste than the spicy-sour pickle it was meant to be.

And speaking of good things (before this post turns decidedly not good), it turns out that the video of class 9 singing Imagine has won the United Planet video contest!! So $100 USD will be donated to the school. That's 7000 rupees and I'm hoping should be enough to allow me to plaster, paint and carpet one room to be used for a music / activities room. Plus a little extra for some furnishings or maybe small instruments. The students were so thrilled and proud. I don't think they're used to winning much of anything, especially when it comes to competing with other schools or other countries.

The students have had their exams this week and it's been revealing beyond belief. I've only been involved with the English tests and I can only say that I hope it's a much different story for other subjects where the teachers might have a better grasp of the subject matter. Standard test questions prepared by the local school district office were brought in and quickly showed exactly where our students are compared with others in the area. It was an uncomfortable realization for me to see just how far behind they are from where they should be at this point in the school year (end of trimester 2). Generally what I've seen from observing tests administered to the younger classes is that tests will be handed out only to be received with blank stares and not even an inkling of comprehension about how it could be answered. Or actually what the questions are asking in the first place. So the teacher will focus on one or two students and walk them through the answers, literally spelling out exactly what words to write down, and then instruct all the other students to copy their papers. This made it very easy, if unpleasant, to grade them all (a task that was given to me for most of the primary classes as the teachers themselves weren't sure of the answers) because it was essentially the same test 20 times over with only small variations every 5 tests or so where someone had made a fresh new mistake for all the others nearby to also copy down.

It's a little different with the older classes who aren't walked through their exams in that way. Instead they are left to their own devices for 2.5 hours to complete as much as they can. This makes it possible to tell where each of them are (even though it still seems a fair amount of copying takes place), but it's rough to hand out several scores as low as 5%. The only secondary class whose papers I graded was class 10. The head teacher teaches this class and his English is very good, but it's hard to see how he could cram 10 years worth of English knowledge into their minds in time to get them up to speed for their School Leaving Certificate exams that are now only 4 months away. In many cases, there again seemed to be hardly any comprehension of how questions could be answered. For example, if given a poem to read and then asked questions about it like say, "what is meant by 'double dying'?", the most common answer that came back would be an exact copy of the line in the poem that had the words 'double dying' in it. I tried to be as generous as I possibly could with grades by giving points for anything that might have been even close to showing some scrap of understanding, but even still only 5 students came out with passing grades. And I should note that here in Nepal, what is considered a passing grade is not 50 or 60%, but roughly 30%. The very highest student achieved just over 50%.

So, I've now got a measure of exactly how much work I have cut out for me and if I needed something to rekindle my motivation I think I've found it. It's also made for a bit of a shift in focus for me and I've started to work hard on a new project as well, but I'll have to save that for another post as this one is by far long enough as it is and I'm now being called upstairs for rice.

Namaste!